In the first two
weeks of the Point of Reference League project, we established
that for the league to be useful to the greatest number of people,
it would feature:

12 teams;

Head-to-head scoring;

A redrafter format;

Team defenses/special teams (instead of IDPs);

A lineup of 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3WRs, 1 TE, 1 kicker, and 1 defense;
and

A roster of 16 players.

I’ve received late responses from numerous readers who
want to argue against the utility of one or more of these features.
That is to be expected; the nature of compromise is to make everyone
more or less unhappy. Even so, the quibbles concerning the first
six points were generally minor in the face of the overwhelming
consensus.

Then came the three questions I raised last week:

Should the PoR league award points per reception;

Should the PoR league award bonus points for 300-yard passing
performances, 100-yard rushing performances, and 100-yard receiving
performances; and

Should the PoR league award bonus points for long TDs.

Consensus? We don’t got no steeeenking consensus. Although
the
poll that Mike Krueger set up for us didn’t attract
as much attention as the other polls associated with this project,
the votes on bonus points for high-yardage games and long TDs
were split down the middle. According to the poll, there was a
slight preference for awarding points per reception, but in the
email responses I received, there was a slight preference for
not awarding points per reception. I thought the tough calls in
this project would come on 60-40 splits, but the splits I see
on these three questions are closer to 51-49. Those of you who
said that once I got to the hard questions, I would get nowhere—well,
maybe you were right.

Most of the email responses I received were simply votes one
way or another, but a few people took the time to explain their
positions. According to Dan (who’s chimed in every week
so far I believe):

I think there should be points per reception. However,
I would like to see less points awarded for a RB than a WR/TE,
for obvious reasons of keeping it fair with regards to the higher
% of passes to RB's, than to WR/TE. The p/per/rec option opens
up the waiver wire a bit on those possession receivers and low
total yardage RB's who end up with more catches than yards. Just
as important as getting a tough first down, as catching a long
bomb. Otherwise I think it reduces the number of quality fantasy
players, or even makes some of the higher quality players even
more elite. No p/per/rec could be an option in a smaller league
though!

Definitely bonus points for yardage! I would like to see a stat
not used in any league that I know of yet, which is YAC. Yards
after the catch is much more representative of a player's individual
effort, and I would chose to use that in place of p/per/rec.

Bonus points for long scores is cool, but in the interest of keeping
it simple, I say just having standard yardage ranges for set #
of points.

Dan was not alone in his desire to award points per reception, but
once you decide to award those points, you have to consider
how to award them. Whereas Dan advocates awarding reduced
points to RBs for receptions, Tom has this to say:

I like points per reception, but only
for receivers. The best thing about PPR is that it makes receivers
competitive with running backs in some scoring systems (like the
one my league uses). But if you give running backs points for
their catches, then you are right back to having a huge gap between
the two positions.

In addition to one guy who advocates no PPR for RBs and another
who advocates reduced PPR for running backs, I heard from plenty
of people who are in favor of PPR, but seemed to think that all
players should get the same points (or at least that is what I assume,
since they didn’t mention anything about adapting the scoring
to specific positions). As if that weren’t enough, there are
plenty of folks who are dead set against the PPR concept—most
of them for the reasons outlined by Bubba and Scott. As Bubba put
it:

Let’s say I am a tight end two yards behind
the line of scrimmage with a defensive lineman on either side
of me. Now let’s say that all the downfield receivers are
covered and my QB can’t throw the ball away because he is
still in the pocket. He is about to get sacked, so he throws the
ball to me to avoid an intentional grounding call. What’s
the right thing for me to do? Catch it and get hammered by the
two linemen for a loss (at best) and/or a fumble (at worst)? Or
shouldn’t I just pretend to try to catch it and actually
swat the ball to the ground so that we can get back to the original
line of scrimmage? The right football move is obvious, but in
a PPR league, you end up awarding points to a player who makes
the wrong decision here.

Think about it. Do you want to give points for successfully handing
the ball off to a running back? Do you want to give points to
a center and QB every time they successfully execute a snap? I
can understand giving points for yardage (since a WR who gets
150 yards worth of catches obviously has a positive impact on
the game for his team even if he never finds the end zone). But
you can’t just start awarding points for anything that happens
in the course of a game without knowing whether it’s positive
or negative.

I follow Bubba’s complaint, but I’m sure he would acknowledge
that there are times when gaining yardage is counterproductive for
a team. If a team is leading by one point and one of its defensive
players intercepts a pass with no time left on the clock, he should
obviously just kneel down and let the game be over. However, if
he manages to run the ball all the way to the end zone for an unnecessary
TD (the wrong decision, in Bubba’s terms), his defense will
probably still get points in most fantasy leagues. My point is that
even Bubba probably isn’t willing to stick by his logic uncompromisingly.
But I also understand that we all have to draw the line somewhere—and
I respect Bubba’s decision to draw it where he has. However,
I think Scott’s point on PPR will resonate more powerfully
with readers:

I’ve been in leagues with [PPR rules], and
they’re fun. But I prefer leagues that stick to the simple
category of scores and yardage. When I’m traveling on a
Sunday, I can check the TVs at any airport with a good chance
of seeing how many yards and TDs Marvin Harrison had, but I’m
not likely to see how many catches he has made unless I’m
actually watching the game he’s playing in. The same goes
for newspapers. On Monday morning I can get yards and scores from
just about any newspaper, but I’ll probably have a hard
time figuring out how many catches my guys had. I know lots of
people are practically hooked up to their computers by some kind
of umbilical cord, but there are some of us who like to play fantasy
football and don’t spend every working minute in front of
a computer screen tracking down all kinds of crazy NFL stats.
I like to be able to guesstimate my team’s score from the
stats that I’m likely to come across on Sunday, so I say
keep the scoring system as simple as possible for folks like me.
A bonus for a 100-yard game is fine. Yardage info is easy to come
by. But points per reception can be a chore for some of us.

On the matter of bonus points for long scores, I heard from lots
of people who agree that that scoring method is “fun,”
but Ryan had this argument against the concept:

Sure, big plays are fun, but if you’re already
getting points for yardage and scores, then a 60-yard TD is already
worth way more than a 20-yard TD. Throwing in an extra bonus is
just an unnecessary complication.

I see Ryan’s point, but I’m more inclined to reach his
conclusion via Scott’s logic (which means alienating roughly
half of those who responded). In the interest of keeping things
simple, I would have to go with no points per reception, no bonuses
for long scores, and some kind of bonus for 100 yards rushing/receiving
and 300 yards passing. And now that I’ve lost half my audience,
let’s change the subject.

This Week’s Question

The question for Week 11 is about the locking of rosters for the
final part of the season. We’ll temporarily suspend the PoR
discussion to address this question because it is time-sensitive
for many readers. The matter was first brought to my attention by
a reader named Shawn last week:

Help! I am new to fantasy football, but it looks
like I am going to make the playoffs in my league. I’m getting
advice from other owners to make room on my roster for backups
that I don’t really care about because all rosters in my
league are locked the week before our playoffs begin in Week 12.
In the regular season, our commissioner [either approves or vetos
trades]. But apparently the previous commissioner for the league
made some questionable calls about roster moves in the playoffs
a few years back, so the league adopted a rule that no roster
changes are allowed from Week 11 to Week 16 (when we have our
championship). I’m being told that I should carry 3 quarterbacks
into the playoffs because I won’t be able to use the waiver
wire if my first 2 QBs get hurt. This seems nutty to me. No matter
how many QBs I take, it’s possible that all of them can
get hurt, and I won’t be able to go to the waiver wire for
a replacement. I could advance all the way to our championship
game and find out that I am unable to start a QB—any QB
at all!—in the Super Bowl. Do other leagues have this crazy
rule?

I’ve received two follow-up questions on the same subject
from other readers this week, so I suspect it is a matter of some
importance in the FF world. The first comes from Bradley:

Our league playoff structure is pretty simple. Of
the 12 teams in the league, six make the real playoffs for the
super bowl, and the other six finish up by playing in a toilet
bowl competition. This means that all teams remain active into
the playoffs, and it created some problems for us last year. It
looked to me like a couple of the toilet bowl teams were cutting
key players (not high-profile players, but players with really
favorable matchups) for questionable replacements just so that
the guy who ended up winning our super bowl could pick the players
up on waivers. It wasn’t like Team A was cutting a player
at 11:53 a.m. and Team B was picking him up at 11:54. There were
always a few hours between the cut and the pickup, and any one
of us could have picked up the player in the meantime. But somehow,
this one guy just happened to be the first one to notice these
players week after week. A couple of other owners thought there
was something funny going on, so we voted on whether his acquisitions
were acceptable or not. If they had been stars, we might have
voted down the acquisitions, but most of us decided that the evidence
for collusion was too flimsy, so we approved the acquisitions
(the vote was something like 10-2 or 9-3—not really close).
That’s all water under the bridge, but now I’m wondering
how we can make sure not to have the same thing happen again.
I know a lot of leagues lock the waiver wire during the playoffs,
but it seems like that would create a bunch of headaches. Maybe
the best thing is to have an impartial commissioner rule on the
acquisitions, but I’ve never understood how a commissioner
who plays in a league is supposed to be impartial.

I had this message from Cedric waiting for me this morning:

As soon as you finish with the PoR thing, would
you please ask people how I am supposed to make sense [of roster
lockdowns]? In my league, we lock rosters after Week 9. [The argument
seems to be that 1) most teams have a pretty good idea of whether
they will be competitive in the playoffs or not; and 2) those
that are out of the running will make arrangements to give their
best players to friends who look as if they might] go the distance.
I can see how that might happen, but it seems really unlikely
to me. Nobody in my league is that much of a ****. So just because
it might happen, I’m stuck with the team I have now for
the rest of the season. The commissioner has always said that
this is how things are in the NFL. Well I have two words for him
and anyone else who thinks that [roster lockdowns] have anything
to do with the NFL: Vinny Testaverde. I can’t get a new
QB from the waiver wire even if I need one, but somehow the Patriots
can sign Vinny after the Week 10 games even though Brady is healthy.
Locking rosters makes no sense.

I’m sure there are more ways than I can think of to handle
this problem. I don’t doubt that some of them are much better
than roster lockdowns in certain contexts, but I can also understand
why some leagues would opt to go the route of the roster lockdown
(though I have to say it seems a bit extreme to lock down rosters
in Week 9, especially with Week 10 as a bye week). One solution
that suggests itself to me is the possibility of allowing owners
to use the waiver wire to pick up any player as long as he hasn’t
been on any other fantasy team in the past three or four weeks,
but I’m sure there are better compromises than that. I look
forward to sharing some of those better compromises next week.

Last Man Standing (Courtesy of Matt
& Michael)

Matt’s Picks

Trap Game: Pittsburgh at Cleveland
– The Steelers by all means should have this game
in the bag, but no games this year are as they seem. Cleveland’s
offense is going to get better now that someone other than Maurice
Carthon is calling the plays. Braylon Edwards is stepping up his
game and the Browns would love nothing more than to beat their
biggest rivals at home as an underdog. The Steeler defense is
not as strong as it was last year and the offense may have some
trouble in the snow that is predicted for Sunday. Look for this
to be a close game where anything is possible.

#3: Kansas City over Oakland (7-3 Season):
The Chiefs may be knocking on the door of San Diego and Denver,
but they have more than those two teams to worry about on their
remaining schedule. Next week they play Denver at home, and they
might be excited about that game, but they need to take care of
business against an Oakland defense that is ranked 3rd against
the pass. With Tony Gonzalez out they might find themselves hard
pressed to mount a passing attack and they will rely very heavily
on Larry Johnson so that they don’t fall behind early. The
good news for Chiefs is that Oakland is ranked dead last in offense
and the fans in Kansas City know that what this game means. The
Chiefs fans are going to be load and if Aaron Brooks comes back,
he is prone to mistakes which the Chiefs defense should capitalize
on.

#2: Miami over Minnesota (7-3 Season):
The Viking offense is so bad right now and while Brad Johnson
can still execute the throws needed in the NFL, the team’s
lack of quality receivers prevent them from lighting up the scoreboard.
Chester Taylor is averaging over 4 yards per carry, but when he
is shut down by opposing defenses, or more importantly, if Minnesota
gets behind, there is little chance of them coming back. Against
a Dolphins defense that is ranked 2nd overall, the Vikings are
going to find it hard to score points against a team that is finally
starting to live up to the hype. Joey Harrington on the other
hand has won his last two games, throwing for 5 touchdowns in
those games. Combine that with Ronnie Brown not having to deal
with 8 man fronts because of Harrington’s mobility and the
formula for the Dolphins to win their 4th game of the season is
set. Don’t look for a shootout, but you have to like the
way the Dolphins are playing.

#1: Arizona over Detroit (8-2 Season):
Okay, I am now officially off my rocker. The Cardinals are 1-8
playing against the 2-7 Lions at home and are favored by 2. This
game will be watched only by those diehard fans from each of their
home markets and fantasy football fanatics focused on stats for
Larry Fitzgerald and Roy Williams. This game will most likely
be decided by who has the ball last. It doesn’t help the
Lions’ cause that Detroit’s defense has held their
opponents under 20 points only twice all season, those being the
last two games, but I don’t see that trend continuing this
week.

---------------------

Michael’s Picks

3 - (5-5) - Seahawks over 49ers -
Even with key injuries, Seattle has shown they can win, even though
some of the opponents haven't been great. The Niners are one of
those not-so-great teams. Hasselbeck may still be out for this game,
but Wallace has gotten the job done and should continue to do so
if he's the man this week. Alexander may finally be healthy enough
to play, but expect him to split time if he does.

2 - (8-2) - Eagles over Titans -
The Titans aren't the mess they were earlier in the year, but they
still aren't close to Philadelphia's level. With Stallworth back
and the Eagles committing to a more balanced offense, they will
be harder to predict and harder to stop.

1 - (9-1) - Chiefs over Raiders -
It's easy to pick against Oakland, but I really can see Larry Johnson
piling up a ton of yards against the Raider defense. Huard has played
well and should feel comfortable spreading the ball around by now
since he won't have the injured Gonzales to lean on. With homefield
advantage, the KC defense will be able to thwart the disaster zone
known as the Raiders offense.For responses to this week's fantasy question or to share your
LMS picks, please email
me no later than 10 a.m. EST on Wednesdays during the football
season.

Readers who want to have their fantasy questions answered live,
on the air, by Mike Davis are invited to tune into FFEXradio
on Friday afternoons at 5:00 p.m. EST. Archived
programs are also available.